"Trump card" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... papers must have blundered—such things often happen. She is much altered, but they were her eyes, her lips. To think that her peerless beauty should have brought her so low! She is nothing to me now, though I nearly broke my heart over her once. But she may serve as a useful tool. She will be a trump card to play, if need be. She has probably come to London recently, and if she stays any time it would not be a difficult matter for me to find her. I daresay she drained the Russian's purse, and then served him as she ...
— In Friendship's Guise • Wm. Murray Graydon
... what he did for Italy: his second trump card, if we call Spain his first. Spain belonged to the future, Italy to the present. Her cycle was half over, and she had done nothing (in B.C. 29) very worthy with it. First, an effort should be made towards the purificatior of family-life: a pretty hopeless task, wherein ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... your proclamation, there is still a trump card to be played. Did you not say that the basis of any negotiation in Singapore was the Independence of the Philippines under an American protectorate? This is what Consul Pratt telegraphed and to which Dewey and Washington agreed; as I figured up the 'price' of the telegram, I know ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester
... lost in admiration of Miss Chatterton's elaborate intrigue and bold independent action; but now he came to think of it, though Miss Chatterton's style was more showy, Mrs. Fazakerly had played by far the better game of the two. Durant, who had regarded himself as a trump card up Mrs. Fazakerly's sleeve, perceived with a pang that he had counted for nothing in the final move. Mrs. Fazakerly had not, as he idiotically supposed, been greatly concerned with Frida Tancred's attitude toward him. She had divined nothing, ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair
... that Sterzer had held the trump card in the shape of the original agreement between him and Gordon. And he hung on to it like the Old Scratch to a fiddler. Gordon and his crowd had done everything, short of murder, to get it; hired folks to steal it, and so on, because, once they DID get it, Gabe hadn't a leg to stand ...
— The Depot Master • Joseph C. Lincoln
... doubt, however, that all the enemies of Davis in Congress and out of it, in the opening months of 1865, made a determined series of attacks upon his Administration. Nor can there be any doubt that the popular faith in Lee was used as their trump card. To that end, a bill was introduced to create the office of commanding general of the Confederate armies. The bill was generally applauded, and every one assumed that the new office was to be given to Lee. On the day after the bill had passed the Senate the Virginia Legislature ...
— The Day of the Confederacy - A Chronicle of the Embattled South, Volume 30 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson
... silence for ten seconds after he had closed, and then set the hall ringing to cheers and vigorously plied hands and feet. For an instant he paused, with his arms folded, and his keen blue eyes sliding over the faces before him, and then played his trump card. At his signal, a banner, hastily prepared, was borne, slowly revolving, down the central aisle, and on this were boldly lettered the words which at the same moment McGrath was thundering from ...
— The Lieutenant-Governor • Guy Wetmore Carryl
... You can show it to any guard, who will, on seeing it, give you the right-of-way. In case he does not, appeal to his superior officer, and allow him to read your police permit. Should that fail, then play your trump card, which is this highly important document. The Director of the Police, who is a very shrewd man, seemed anxious to make your acquaintance before you began your investigation. He asked me if you would call upon him, but seemed ...
— Jennie Baxter, Journalist • Robert Barr
... wanted to hold him as a captive." Moreover, Brougham, who was in a position to know, said, "There can be little doubt that if Bonaparte had got to London, the Whig Opposition were ready to use him as their trump card to ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... piece of evidence against him. I looked straight into Weir's eyes as he came forward, ungainly and uncertainly, smiling half his dirty teeth bare, and mopping his yellowy face with a dirty handkerchief. To my astonishment he made not a single sign of recognition. I was his trump card, ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... sure you realize what it means to you?" I began urging, because I knew that I would soon have to play my trump card. "Here you are, a grayhead at thirty-five, without a thing in life but that farm, and you—heavens, Mac, don't you know that you are one of the greatest Greek scholars in the world? Don't you think you owe the world something? What are you giving? Nothing! You have suppressed even the ...
— The City and the World and Other Stories • Francis Clement Kelley
... fours, fives, and sixes, have been discarded. The sixty-four cards of both packs, shuffled well together, are then dealt out, eight to each player, by threes, twos, and threes; the seventeenth turned up for trump, and the rest left, face downwards, on the table. If the trump card be a seven, the dealer scores ten points. An incorrect deal or an exposed card necessitates a new deal, which passes to the other player. A trump card takes any card of another suit. Except trumping, the higher card, whether of the same suit or not, takes the trick—the ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... have sketches of scenes between Delphica and M. Falarique, with whom the young Germania was cleverly ingenuous indeed—a seminary Celimene; and between Delphica and M. Mytharete, with whom she was archaeological, ravishingly amoebaean of Homer. Dr. Gannius holds a trump card in his artless daughter, conjecturally, for the establishment of the language of the gutturals in the far East. He has now a suspicion, that the inventive M. Falarique, melted down to sobriety by misfortune, may some ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... used to have that truthful habit myself, and the best I ever got was the worst of it. All this talk about love and loyalty and constancy is fine and dandy in a book, but when a girl has to look out for herself, take it from me, whenever you've got that trump card up your sleeve just play it and rake in the pot. [Takes LAURA'S hand affectionately.] You know, dearie, you're just about the only one in ...
— The Easiest Way - Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911 • Eugene Walter
... det any apple?" The wee man sometimes succeeded in making terms with his mother, when the other children were not present. Though feeling himself a trifle over-confident, he held the disputed toe with the air of one keeping back a trump card, and looked his ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... That was his trump card. With the feeling that his secret was near discovery he hastened to lead up to it, and possibly that very thing might prevent its revelation. He left orders to his agents that all letters concerning his affairs were to be directed to his wife. He was going away for ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai
... inevitability of that force is summed up in the following words: "Don't you know that we count no more in the life of these men than tamed animals? It's a game, and if we don't play our cards well, we lose." Woman in the battle with life has but one weapon, one commodity—sex. That alone serves as a trump card in the ...
— Anarchism and Other Essays • Emma Goldman
... have been driven into taking them up. Yet you want battles, you want your frontiers defended. A moment, sir! there is no need for heat, no need for any words. The matter may be said to be at an end." He smiled—a thought viciously, be it confessed—and then played his trump card, hurled his bombshell. "Since the views of your Council are in such utter opposition to the views of the Commander-in-Chief, you will no doubt welcome Lord Wellington's proposal to withdraw from this country and to advise his Majesty's Government to withdraw the assistance ...
— The Snare • Rafael Sabatini
... it were. Now these remarks are not opprobrious. They are designed to comfort you for the apparent mistakes of the trip to Hotel Frisbie. Things have come out better than we could have arranged them. Sylvia's guardian angel was holding Thinkright in the background, like a trump card, as you might say"— ...
— The Opened Shutters • Clara Louise Burnham
... was made thoroughly uneasy by her rigid pallor. He blamed himself for not having waited longer to produce his trump card and clinch his possession ...
— In Apple-Blossom Time - A Fairy-Tale to Date • Clara Louise Burnham
... passed fierce resolutions about him, and a monster petition is being prepared praying for his outlawry or excommunication. The cause was a letter concerning the question whether dramatists ought to reduce their fees for performance by amateur clubs of copyright works, and the trump card of the opponents was the fact that many of the entertainments are given for the benefit of charities. Mr Zangwill it was who observed that "charity uncovers a multitude of shins"; perhaps one may add, clumsily, that ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"
... them up to the desired pitch of anger, Buck Tooth laughed and played a trump card, so to speak. In his own way he told a group of the captives that not only had they been caught, to be sent back to Mexico there to suffer long imprisonment, but the object for which they had risked so much had ...
— The Boy Ranchers Among the Indians - or, Trailing the Yaquis • Willard F. Baker
... so had collected inside, the Professor came down from his keg, and assumed the office of lecturer, explaining the quaint physical peculiarities of Matty Cann, and the intellectual eminence of the educated pig, and then passing to his trump card—the ...
— The Missing Link • Edward Dyson
... guillotine or the gallows, I opened the letter. For as long as I might have counted "one, two," slowly, the paper looked black before my eyes, as if ink were spilt over it, blotting out the words: but the dark smudge cleared away, and showed me—nothing, except that, if Alexis Godensky held a trump card, I was not to have a sight of it ...
— The Powers and Maxine • Charles Norris Williamson |
